M$’s Crapware Kills Education Even in Redmond, WA

“The virus is affecting not only high school and middle school students who received a laptop for the first time this year, but also devices at the district office and elementary schools.

That’s 50 schools and more than 25,000 computers. And here’s the ironic thing about it: The Lake Washington School District comprises the cities of Kirkland and Redmond, the latter, of course, being the hometown of Microsoft. Those laptops are all running on PCs with Windows 7.”

There, you have it. The kind of thing I saw in several schools in the North of Canada running that other OS and bogging down IT to unusability. Folks there just did without until I showed them how to migrate to GNU/Linux. The folks in Washington state are hiring five IT guys to try to undo the damage. They won’t succeed. You cannot rewind the clock on everything.

I recommend Debian GNU/Linux, an OS that works for you and not for M$ and it’s malware “partners”.

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About Robert Pogson

I am a retired teacher in Canada. I taught in the subject areas where I have worked for almost forty years: maths, physics, chemistry and computers. I love hunting, fishing, picking berries and mushrooms, too.

Some 2,500 computers have been removed from service, staff has been added to quarantine the infection, and the district says antivirus software and firewalls were installed on every computer.

So you have to remove computers from service, leaving students without IT, you have to pay additional staff, and you have to pay for slowing down the computers even more by installing antivirus software and firewalls? A resounding success! A good thing they saved money by going the Microsoft route.

And for those wondering, the district went with PCs over Macs for several reasons: the proximity of Microsoft HQ, the company’s involvement in supporting local and national education and last but not least — especially for a school district — cost.

You couldn’t make this stuff up, even if you tried really, really hard.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.